Rachel is celebrating a recent win before the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") on behalf of her clients, the musicFIRST Coalition and Future of Music Coalition (“FMC”).  In a four year-long proceeding known as the 2018 Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules, the National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB") had lobbied and argued on behalf of radio conglomerates that the FCC should eliminate limits on the number of AM/FM stations that can be owned in each local market.  This change, if adopted, would have dramatically strained the already limited local competition and diversity on the radio airwaves.  Radio conglomerates would have been allowed AM/FM monopolies in small and medium markets, and near monopolies in larger markets.  We are thrilled to announce that on December 26, 2023, the FCC rejected the NAB’s monopolistic proposal.  Instead, the FCC decided to promote local competition and preserve what’s left of diversity and localism on radio airwaves by preserving limits on the size of local AM/FM radio clusters. The FCC's Report and Order cited multiple filings by Stilwell Law.

With these filings, Rachel and her music industry clients, musicFIRST and FMC, along with allies in the public interest and diverse radio space including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Urban One, Taxi Productions, Inc. (KJLH-FM Los Angeles) and Free Press, successfully convinced the FCC to reject the NAB’s proposal.  
Rather than siding with big business, the FCC is following its public interest mandate to promote diversity, localism and local competition and preserved what’s left of limits on the number of FM stations that one entity can own in a given local market.  

Concluding the years-long 2018 Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership Rules, the FCC frequently cited musicFIRST and Future of Music Coalition’s multiple filings in its 94-page Report and Order including this quote: 

“We agree with those commenters who assert that if further consolidation were allowed, smaller and independent radio stations could be sacrificed needlessly based on an unrealistic premise that ever larger radio owners are the answer to compete for advertising on a level playing field with large technology companies.  Or as one commenter put it, radio 'will never out-Google Google, or out-Facebook Facebook.'  In any event, our conclusion that the current radio rule remains necessary in the public interest as the result of competition rests on the premise that the listening public is the constituency that the rule is intended to serve.  The purpose of the rule is to ensure competition among broadcast radio stations within a market so that radio owners are motivated to provide the highest quality of service to the public. Reducing the number of competitors in a local market puts that quality of service at risk, threatens viewpoint diversity, and may reduce the amount of local programming available.”  (Report and Order at Paragraphs 44-45. 

The musicFIRST Coalition is comprised of SoundExchange, the Recording Academy, the Latin Recording Academy, American Association of Independent Music, R.I.A.A., American Federation of Musicians, SAG-AFTRA, the Music Managers Forum, the Christian Music Trade Association, the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, the Society of Singers and The Vocal Group. Future of Music Coalition is a nonprofit music advocacy think tank. Rachel is indebted to musicFIRST and FMC for their leadership, as well as Stilwell Law associates and co-authors Makenna Cox, Samantha Gutierrez and Roy Lenn. 

The FCC's Report and Order can be read in its entirety here.